Friday, June 01, 2012

Gadget-Nature: French Musicians As Landscape

I’ve wondered about beautiful gadgets
and I’ve wondered if their very beauty
might interfere with their gadget-nature.

A woman told me an untold story
this afternoon about her and gadgets.

This is also about French musicians
but for this story the French musicians
are part of the background. They’re just landscape.

Here’s the woman’s story about gadgets:

“Some band was performing across the street.
Two French musicians I never heard of
but when I told my daughter she freaked out
and told me I had to, I just had to,
go get photographs of them after work.
There were dozens of security guards
in the park around the bandshell stopping
people from filming the French musicians.
But point-and-shoot cameras were allowed.
Some hipster with a bag of equipment
I think had a Canon EOS 5
and the guards wouldn’t let the guy get near
the front of the bandshell to take pictures.
I walked past holding my Leica M9
and held it up and the guards just assumed
the rangefinder was a point-and-shoot thing.
I was kind of giggling since the Leica
cost about twice as much as the Canon
and has a full-frame sensor but the guards
let me through just because it looked simple.
My daughter was happy I don’t carry
a fancy looking gadget camera.”

“And how was the music from the French guys?”

“I barely paid attention. I just grabbed
a few pictures for my daughter and left.”

“Their music didn’t grab you the same way
it grabs your daughter and makes her freak out?”

“She likes them because they’re cute. She asked me
to take their picture, not to record them.”

There’s a story there about gadgets, told,
and I think there’s a story there, untold,
about the French musicians but for now
they’re just background to the gadget story.